The Team

Leneh Buckle

Leneh approaches autism research from a hard science background with degrees in neuroscience, psychology and bioethics; also founder of Autscape autistic conference, mother of 5, speaker and trainer when she gets the chance.

Dr. Yo Dunn

Yo is an independent trainer and consultant who works across the public sector (primarily in social care and education) with specialisms in autism and law. She has expertise on the legal framework of adult social care in particular and on a range of areas of public law relevant to the lives of autistic people including the Care Act; safeguarding; commissioning; Mental Capacity law; Deprivation of liberty; Special Educational Needs and Disability Law; health law; data protection; equality and human rights law. She provides training and consults for many English local authorities and other clients (sometimes on behalf of Belinda Schwehr’s Care and Health Law). She has a background in social policy analysis and a thorough working knowledge of professional practice issues in both adult and children’s services. She is autistic, a parent of autistic children and is deeply involved in the adult self-advocate community, having recently retired after many years as company secretary of Autscape. Yo is also one of NAP’s Autism Experts.

Damian Milton

Project Leader, Psychiatry GNAT Lead and Research GNAT Lead

Damian works for the Tizard Centre, University of Kent as a part-time Lecturer in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. He also works part-time for the National Autistic Society (NAS) as an Autism Knowledge and Expertise Consultant. Damian also teaches on the MA Education (Autism) programme at London South Bank University and has been a consultant for the Transform Autism Education (TAE) project and a number of projects for the Autism Education Trust (AET). Damian’s interest in autism began when his son was diagnosed in 2005 as autistic at the age of two. Damian was also diagnosed with Asperger’s in 2009 at the age of thirty-six. Damian’s primary focus is on increasing the meaningful participation of autistic people and people with learning disabilities in the research process, and as well as leading this project, chairs the Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC): www.PARCautism.co.uk

Dinah Murray

Communications GNAT Lead

Dinah Murray is an independent researcher with a PhD on the topic of Language and Interests; a campaigner, a former support worker for people with varied learning disabilities including autism and a former tutor for Birmingham University’s distance learning courses on autism (adults) tutoring practitioners. Her autism related work has been published in Autism, in Good Autism Practice, Autonomy, a number of books and on-line; she has presented at numerous conferences on varied themes related to autism.

Dinah’s autism-related research interests have included: medication and its impact on quality of life; information technology for people who don’t use speech; the ethics of autism research; the nature of the human being, with a particular focus on interests. She has been assessed as autistic, and if growing up today would certainly have attracted an autism diagnosis. Since the early ‘90s Dinah has been involved in campaigns around abusive prescribing practices, access to digital communications and generally active removal of barriers to the acceptance, appreciation and expression of autistic and other atypical variants of the human being.

After three years on the National Autism Project‘s Strategy Board, where she established an Autistic Advisory Panel which proved highly useful, Dinah was honoured to get an unsolicited donation from Dame Stephanie Shirley of £100,000. This has been earmarked for the National Autistic Taskforce, launched at the start of 2018 with a remit to address justice and autonomy for autistic people, especially those who don’t use speech effectively to meet their needs. Dinah is strategic advisor to the Taskforce.

Kabie Brook

Social Care GNAT Lead

Kabie Brook is chairperson and one of the co-founders of ARGH – Autism Rights Group Highland. Kabie lives in Inverness and am the mother of four children. As well as having an Autistic family and being Autistic, she also has a long history of working with, for and alongside Autistic people; 25 years paid and unpaid with all kinds of people of all ages. For the last few years it is ARGH that has taken up most of her time. ARGH is an Autistic people’s organisation, run by and for Autistic people.